Doing body work on a boat is a pain in the @$$

[SkarabPunk]

I spent all day trying to get the hull free of imperfections, and holes. I used a 1/2 gallon of Bondo, 5 cans of primer and a ton of sand paper, and the darn thing is still looks like crap. I'm so close to sending it to a body shop. haha. Any of you guys have the same problem?

Jeff

 

[Hammerhead]

Yikes! Looks like you may have gone to far. should have thown out the question before you started. Anyway to get it back to the condition it was in before you added 10 pound of bondo to it?

It would probably be a good idea to start over.

Hammer

 

[Joe Reese]

I was in the same spot you are. Don't give up, If you are finishing a wooden boat start by sanding ALL the bondo OFF, and reshape and angeles on the hull and Prime the boat! They say Two lite coats are better than one. Spray one lite and sand light with 400 grit, spray light and sand lite. Sand off 80% of what you spray on. It will take more than four coats to start seeing the grain fill in. My tunnel has about 6 now it could be 8 or 9 I stop counting.

For the hard to sand places use a water dropper to drop primer in to the corners and let the paint do the filling for its self.

Good luck,

Joe R.

 

[Joe Reese]

I was in the same spot you are. Don't give up, If you are finishing a wooden boat start by sanding ALL the bondo OFF, and reshape and angeles on the hull and Prime the boat! They say Two lite coats are better than one. Spray one lite and sand light with 400 grit, spray light and sand lite. Sand off 80% of what you spray on. It will take more than four coats to start seeing the grain fill in. My tunnel has about 6 now it could be 8 or 9 I stop counting.

For the hard to sand places use a water dropper to drop primer in to the corners and let the paint do the filling for its self.

Good luck,

Joe R.

 

[Hammerhead]

I do the water dropper trick, too. It work great with sealer. If you have a fiberglass boat with bad battle damage, you should go get yourself a surfboard repair kit, and some gel coat. You will find that you can get a rid of a lot of small dings just by brushing it up with a mini wire wheel on a dremel, and filling it in with gel coat. Sand it down with light grit, and use compound to get it shiny. If you take your time and do it right, you will barely tell that there was damage there

Hammer

 

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I was popping off once to a friend how I could rebuild his piece of sh** boat and he said "be my guess if you fix it I'll buy you a new FM radio." The boat was beat to hell. It took two straight weeks of bondoing, glassing, sanding etc....I had the boat nailed to perfection. The primer was done I laid the white, laid the blue and red. When I went to do the clear coat I had it hanging on a wire. Guess what? The wire broke and the boat came crashing straight down onto the cement pickle forks first!

Busted the pickle forks wide open. Profanity was the only thing I could say for about an hour. I was so bummed. Low and behold I fixed it but the time effort and money I put into the boat I coould have bought myself 6 FM radios.